The Arizona sentinel., 1887-07-02
THE USE OF COCA.
It's Marvellous Effects Upon the Natives
 of South America.

effects upon the inhabitants. He
 says:
 '1 have seen so much recently writ
 ten of coca in newspapers and in medical publications, that I am ini-
 pelled to report what have learned
 of the virtues of this product of South American forests. With leathern straps passing around their foreheads to sustain burdens of 150 or 200 pounds on their backs, I find these 1.-the, slender natives traversing plains
 and mountains with greater celerity than the mule bestride, which travels through the livelong day, six miles an hour. Native physicians, eleves of the schools of Paris, concur In assuring me that this extraordinary capacity for endurance of toll and hunger is to be ascribed to the use by these viageros of coca.
 It is administered freely to infants, and is the chief intoxicant of men and women. Youths, through many days, are entrusted with the care of valuable
 iocks of llamas, having no other sustenance than that to be found in little leathern purses contain- ing coca and its compounds. Indians chew it constantly. They, like the maXillary movements of tobacco chewers, are incessant. From thirty to fifty gramas are consumed daily, serving, unlike tobacco, both as food
 and stimulant. Without coca habitual chewers can not digest food; without it they are unable to ascend mountains, with long, rapid strides, never slack ing their wonderful speed through the livelong day. They will not toil with out it; without it they enjoy nothing; without it, practically, they cease to live. The immediate effect of chewing coca is perfect insensibilitY of the in- terior of the mouth. The immediate sensation is that which one would ex- perience when finding that his mouth ha,l become a great void in somebod, else's head. I had dentist apply it when extracting the roots of a molar tooth, and the effect was as described. Indians constantly using coca finally lose the senses of taste and smell They can eat, without repugnance, most disgusting food and drink most nauscating draughts. The sensitive ness of the mucus membrane has been destroyed. When one goes further and swallow the saliva impregnated with the juice of to coca leaf, de- licious sensation of warmth and per- feet blessedness prevades ones whole being, intellectual, nervous and physical, and he is lapped in the joys of an elysium-
 In doses of fifteen to sixty grains, coca produces delightful intoxication. Its joys transcend in perfect blessed ness all known human delights. A sen- sation of lightness first supervenes; the air inhaled is zephyrs from angels wings; there are wild imaginings and fantastic hallucinations and georgeous visions, and then complete insensibili. ty. It is intoxication without drowsi- ness. without congestion of the brain, involving sense of perfect rest. The law of graviation is suspended and the conqueor drifts bodily among the stars. Meanwhile the muscular system is stimulated to an extraordinary degree. An intellectual excitement supervenes, enabling the possessed" of this demon to watch and toll through sleepless days and nights. No dreadful head ache or more intolerable nervous pros tration follows.
 1t is the most potent nervine, al- most. at mans disposal Its hygienic properties are disclosed from its physi- ological properties" says Spanish M. D., who adds that in hot infusion it is the one useful and healthful beverage one can use after dining. Especially is it commended to the feeble, to those who have transcended limits of sobriety in using alcohol. Its virtues should be tested, therefore, in inebriate asylums. It surely calms nervous excitability of many, and, taken in small quantities, enables one to endur cold and rain and snow, and it enables one to defy great fatigue and restores the forces lost by excesses. It is popularly used for indi- gcstion, for disordered stomachs, for hvsteria, fatulency and collie, and all forms of intestinal disorders. It is used constantly by toilers in mines, and when one reaches the mines after marching several days through flores ts and over mountains, sustained only by the use of coca and maize, he is per- mitted to cat at discretion through four days and have perfect rest. Then he is Tn perfect health and fresh and fat, says the writer above quoted.
 Cocaismo-habitual intoxication by use of coca-more easily becomes habitual and incurable than alcohol ism or addictiveness to opiates. Its consequences, however, are not yet wholly measured or comprehended. excessive or constant use of the in- toxicant begets rapidly moral and in- tellectual degradation and decay; steady decline is interrupted at inter- vals by resistless impulses to do most violent and brutal acts. The nature | of the father, as perverted by the drug, is transmitted to the child, and the in- veterate vice, operating through gen. is said to account for the bru- tality of races of Indians, the Quichas and Aimaras of Bolivian fastnesses.- v Cs,,,